Monthly Archives: March 2020

#688: Tame Impala – Keep on Lying

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A five year wait for a new Tame Impala album ended last month when Kevin Parker gave the world The Slow Rush. I gave it a listen on Valentine’s Day (that’s the day it was released on). I’ve given it a few more since. And I have come to my conclusion that it just doesn’t hit the sweet spot for me. ‘It Might Be Time’ is probably my favourite song on there. As Parker moves towards his pop-oriented singer-songwriter , it felt like the whole album was missing a proper groove. There weren’t many interesting rhythms that were always so present on the preceding three albums.

The majority of the time, the bass guitar has been a major melodic element in Tame Impala songs. ‘The Less I Know the Better’ is a prime example where the instrument takes the centre stage. There are many others too. Some of which I’ve written about. ‘Keep on Lying’ is another in which the the rhythm section is just as, if not more interesting than the vocals and production that surrounds it.

Parker sings about being a terrible person who can’t stop lying to their other half, hiding important information and generally causing emotional distress. In the end, he’s left alone to face the truth that ‘it never really was love’. That is in the first minute and 45 seconds of the track. What follows for almost the duration is an instrumental passage led by a thick bassline, dueling guitar riffs, organ solos and keyboard vamps which are sometimes drowned out by sped-up and spun round clips of people having conversations. It gets crazier and crazier as the song goes on and on before a guitar suddenly starts freaking out at the four minute mark. And just when the track is about to close its first verse comes back in again, I guess to signify the repeating nature in which Parker will just continue to lie to the next lady he meets.

This song’s a jam. Not to say that Kevin Parker has to make another Lonerism. We already have one. It’s done. But, for me, if there weren moments that matched this music on The Slow Rush…. I would have enjoyed it more by a large margin.

#687: Weezer – Keep Fishin’

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So I completely forgot to do this yesterday. I was on my laptop almost all day too so I’m not sure how that happened. But we carry on, it’s nothing to get hung about.

Some time, I’ll say in about 2005, I was watching Kerrang! and the video for ‘Keep Fishin” came on. I would have been nine going on ten and I knew who the Muppets were. Weezer, not so much. But I thought the song was good and the video was good for comedy value too. YouTube was on the verge of being created, so the music video site I knew was the LAUNCH media site that was run by Yahoo! (If anyone remembers that who’s reading, you have my respect). I was able to watch a majority of my favourite videos on there. If they weren’t region-locked. But I remember showing ‘Keep Fishin’ to my good friend back in primary school and we would laugh and joke about what was going on. And through those repeated viewings I steadily began to appreciate that this was a great song. Good hook. Swinging rhythm and memorable melodies/vocal harmonies. That’s really all you need. And I think that was the first song by Weezer that I had ever heard.

Fifteen years on, I still care about Weezer a little. The Blue Album and Pinkerton are undisputed classics. The band’s last release that I was really into was The White Album, some great songs on that. Their new album’s due to be out in about May(?), if I remember correctly. I’ll listen, but I’m not counting down the days towards it or anythin’. Maladroit, the album that ‘Keep Fishin’ appears on, is all right. It saw the group return to a heavier/metal-influenced edge to their music after the relatively tame Green Album. That works well for some songs on there more than others. There are only a select few tracks on it that I’m into, ‘American Gigolo’ is one. ‘Dope Nose’ is another.

Listening to Maladroit for the first time, I was unsettled that the version of ‘Keep Fishin’ on there wasn’t quite the same as the one in the music video. It sounded a lot more rough, less sleek. Kinda messy in some aspects. Turned out that the band re-recorded the guitars, bass and drums for the single release. I’m sure that there are many people who prefer the album version to that of the single. I am not one of those people. So I’ll just clarify that it’s the single version of the track that I’ve grown accustomed to for the past fifteen years.

Here is that album version if you want to compare.

#686: Radiohead – Karma Police

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‘Karma Police’ is the sixth track on OK Computer, Radiohead’s third studio album, released in 1997. That is an album that immediately was praised by critics as one of the best albums of the 20th century. It’s regarded as one of the best albums of all time to this day. I think everyone knows this one. Crowds are able to drown out Thom Yorke when he sings the ‘For a minute there’ section. It’s definitely one of Radiohead’s most popular songs. ‘Creep’ probably takes the crown as the one that really everyone knows, even if they don’t know who the band are. But ‘Karma Police’ is more engaging by a large distance.

I think I saw its music video (above) first before anything else. That’s how it went with me and Radiohead – I saw their music videos before I actually sat down and listened to any of their albums. The band’s videos were always randomly shown on MTV2 in the mid-2000s. For good reason too because they were always worth watching. But I would have been about 10 around that time and not paying so much attention to the music. I don’t know how the track ended up on the family computer – I’ll say one of my sister’s school friends sent her the song through MSN because it wasn’t anything to do with me – but it was there. I listened to it here and there. Been a big fan ever since.

The track is probably seen as an ‘entry-level’ Radiohead track but I feel a lot of emotion when listening to it. A lot more now than when I was a kid because… I guess music moves me a lot easier as I get older. It’s just so gloomy and dark and atmospheric. It has those little moments that add so much to the track, like that ‘aaaaahhh’ vocal that appears on the left side during the verses (recorded on a telephone if you didn’t know), those choir-like ‘oohs’ during the ‘this is what you get’ parts which are actually a synthesizer played by Jonny Greenwood….. the piano that sneaks in and plays its fills. It’s a track that’s full of surprises. And if you don’t feel something when Thom Yorke belts out the last ‘I lost myself’ then you know… you’re just into other stuff I guess. But I like it. Never grown tired of it. Don’t think I will any time soon.

#685: Wilco – Kamera

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It’s back. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. Been a month and a few weeks but I think I’m ready to come back to this. Nothing much has changed. I did pass my driving test at the end of January though. Six months of driving lessons that led up to it. I’m a grand less in wealth than I was before. But at least it’s all over now. This thing just continues to carry on though. And it’s time for the K’s. Like ‘J’, there aren’t a lot of songs to write about beginning with ‘K’ too. It just depends on how I’m feeling whether I can get these out on a regular schedule.

And so to kick it all off is ‘Kamera’, the second track from Wilco’s album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Remembering the time the track really clicked for me, I’d returned home at about 12pm after sleeping round a friend’s house after a birthday party. Got to my house, mother left for work, and I decided to listen to ‘Yankee’ on Spotify. So there I was, hungover, lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling with my headphones on and having an existential crisis when the noise that ends the album’s first track suddenly ended and the acoustic guitars for ‘Kamera’ came in.

The song is understated in its delivery and aesthetic. After seven minutes of ‘I Am Trying to Break Your Heart’, an ambitious opener that ends in a collage of noise, ‘Kamera’ arrives as a straight up acoustic-driven alt-rock tune. As the song goes on, it subtly builds and layers are added. Pretty synthesizer flourishes and keyboard melodies appear here and there interplaying with Jeff Tweedy’s vocal. The backing harmony vocals appear out of nowhere and only for a brief period in the final verse. Jeff Tweedy also double tracks his lower main vocal with one in a higher register in that last part too. Its ending seems to loop forever as the acoustic guitars play a climbing riff alongside a (I want to say) glockenspiel that plays a downward scale. And then just as the band get ready to play the last few chords, there’s a small ‘beep’ that appears to signify their cue to wrap things up.

I didn’t notice all of this when I was on the sofa that time. I think then, I was engaged by how happy it sounded even though there’s a hint of sadness to it that I can’t quite grasp. Several listens to it since then has revealed just how much goes on this song. It has become one of my favourites from the album after years of not caring that much about it.